Not Applicable.
Not Applicable.
1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to communications and, more particularly, to networks and methods for accessing call management profiles.
2. Description of the Background
Competition among telephone service providers in conjunction with recent technological advancements has resulted in a plethora of enhanced calling features and services available to telecommunications customers. Consequently, the typical telecommunications customer may become easily confused when trying to differentiate the various features and services. This potential confusion is exacerbated by the fact that the knowledge regarding the particular services and features to which the customer subscribes, i.e., the subscriber""s call management profile, resides with the telecommunications network and not the telephone device itself. Accordingly, the customer is unable to easily and efficiently access his call management profile to review and/or modify its settings. Rather, the customer is typically required to configure his profile through the involved process of the telephone service provider. Such a process is typically inefficient and confusing for the customer because of the inability to visualize and interact with the call management profile. While these drawbacks apply to individuals trying to manage their personal call management profiles, they are especially acute for persons responsible for coordinating a large number of lines, such as a telecommunications manager for a large entity, such as a business or institution.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a manner in which persons may easily and efficiently access their call management profiles such that they may, for example, view or modify the parameters of the profile. Moreover, there exists a need for a relatively user-friendly manner in which to allow a customer to interface with their call management profiles.
The present invention implements a practical manner in which people may access their call management profiles to, for example, configure their incoming and outgoing enhanced calling features and services as desired. Accordingly, in contrast to prior systems, the present invention provides an efficient and user-friendly manner by which telecommunications customers may configure their call management profiles. Call management may be provided, for example, via a PC browser interface or a telephone interface.
A subscriber""s call management profile is stored in a database in communication with a server. The server may be in communication with a Service Switching Point (SSP) switch, a Service Control Point (SCP), and an Intelligent Resource Server (IRS) of an Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) of a telephone system. The server may be in communication with the AIN of the telephone system via a network and TCP/IP communications links. The subscriber may access the call management profile stored in the database using, for example, either a telephone or a personal computer (PC).
For example, for the PC browser interface, the PC may be in communication with the server via the SSP switch and an Internet Service Provider (ISP). The server may generate an interface document displaying the subscriber""s call management profile in a format suitable for interaction with the PC using, for example, browsing software of the PC. The subscriber may interact with the document using the browser interface, such that data may be written to the profile to configure the profile as desired.
For a telephone interface, the subscriber may call a certain telephone number ,which call is routed to the IRS by the SCP according to AIN call processing functionality. The server generates an audio-based interface document of the call management profile, and the IRS mediates the interaction between the caller and the server. The IRS may translate the audio-based interface document to a voice format using Text-to-Speech (TTS) translation capabilities, allowing the interface document to be voiced back to the subscriber over the telephone. One example of such an audio-based interface format is VoiceXML (Voice eXtensible Markup Language), a web interface language having tags, formats, and structures specific to voice applications. In addition, the IRS may include Automatic Speech Recogrntion (ASR) and DTMF decoding capabilities such that the subscriber may interact with the interface document by speaking certain keywords or dialing certain digits and characters which are recognized by the IRS as commands to execute certain tasks relative to the document.
To provide the enhanced calling features and services outlined in the subscriber""s call management profile, the SCP may retrieve the subscriber""s call management profile from the database via the server and the TCP/IP communications links, and use the data in the profile in the course of executing the call processing logic for the call to determine what features or services to apply to the call.
These and other benefits of the present invention are apparent from the detailed description of the invention hereinbelow.